Shorts, 10/4.

The message Bob and Harvey Weinstein are sending out via the media is clear: We are profitable and we are available. We've been royally screwed by Disney for years now, and we've had enough. Harvey's changed his diet and gone from being a grizzly to a teddy bear. Let's talk. Seth Mnookin's cover story for New York is one of the juicier versions of this message, but a key passage slips in towards the end:

"If Harvey left Disney tomorrow and he wanted to raise a billion dollars in equity, me and every other banker on Wall Street would jump to do it," says a Goldman executive. "If you look at all of the historical returns of all of the major studios over the past seven years, Miramax is in the top two."

In an issue of the New York Times Magazine ostensibly devoted to "The Next Cultural Establishment," AO Scott pauses to consider the passing of the old, imagining American film without Miramax to kick around anymore: "Indie cinema, or whatever you want to call it, will continue to live and die, but there won't be a real New Yorker, or at least a Hollywood fantasy version of one, around to claim credit or invite blame."

And finally on this, if you're just not all that into the speculation over Miramax's future but feel knowing the basics couldn't hurt, Sean Smith has a handy little wrap-up for you in Newsweek.

"This has emerged as the Year of the Ghost - and a second look suggests that the themes and ideas that this seminal anime introduced are more relevant than ever." With a sequel out, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, a series heading to DVD and cable, Stand Alone Complex and tie-in video games and graphic novels on their way, Jeff Yang, in the San Francisco Chronicle, offers a primer on the original, its makers, Masamune Shirow and Mamoru Oshii, and the themes of this "intimate exploration of one individual's quest for existential meaning in an eerily borderless world."

Also via Movie City News: For the Globe and Mail, Sandra Martin takes stock of the current literary adaptations on offer and then lists ten great ones from the past.

Throughout the 1990s, only two films from Europe were shown in Egyptian movie theaters. Two. That's what made Misr International's two-week European Film Panorama in Cairo such a vital event, reports Hani Mustafa in Al-Ahram Weekly, where Yasmine El-Rashidi profiles the extraordinarily dedicated programmer of the series, Marianne Khoury. Via Perlentaucher's "Magazinrundschau."

The New Yorker's Nancy Franklin enjoys Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau's follow-up on Tanner '88, Tanner on Tanner, "a documentary about documentaries, a sendup of our current mania for watching ourselves watch ourselves," but doesn't find Alexandra Pelosi's follow-up to Journeys With George, Diary of a Political Tourist the least bit enjoyable.

Raves for Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry: Mark Rabinowitz, Matt Dentler and Matt Langdon.

David Lowery has a good long talk with Shane Carruth about the making of his Sundance-winner, Primer. Carruth, we learn, is not in a hurry to race off to Hollywood: "I've got four stories that I really like a lot. And I think that, you know, if I get to make films for a living, I think I'll do best working on my own material."

One of the reasons John Patterson's piece on Radio On topped this weekend's shorts - besides its own merits, of course - is that it stirred memories. Not so much of the film (it has been a while, after all) but of the time it nailed so very well. But my own memories wither and blow away next to Ben Slater's. Because he and two friends were executive producers of Chris Petit's follow-up, Radio On (remix). And he's got stories to tell.

ScareFlix executive producer Larry Fessenden is "quickly becoming a downtown version of Roger Corman," writes Jeremiah Kipp in his introduction to his interview for Filmmaker. Also: Guy Cimbalo looks back on this summer's New York Video Festival and Jim Pitt Harris recalls the Stony Brook Film Festival.

Filmbrain's latest reviews from the New York Film Festival: Undertow (David Gordon Green "has a great film in him, and it might not be that many years off") and Notre Musique ("ultimately a very optimistic film").

In the NYT:

• The God of Hell is a play Sam Shepard is throwing together with a tight little cast, Randy Quaid, J Smith Cameron and Tim Roth. "I kind of wanted to get it done in New York before the election," he tells Jesse McKinley. "I'm not sure it matters, but I figured I'd get it out there."
• "Cheat and Charmer by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Elizabeth Frank, comes gift-wrapped in extravagant blurbs." But Michiko Kakutani won't be fooled: "It's an old-fashioned Hollywood sudser."
• Stephen Greenblatt: "Have we learned something about listening to political oratory that Shakespeare's 'friends, Romans, countrymen' did not know?"

Owen Gibson talks to Matt Groening about the future of The Simpsons. There's the movie on the way, and in general, Groening's feeling better about the show than he has in a while. It'll run on, perhaps through to the end of the decade, but of course, it can't run forever. Also in the Guardian, Emma Brockes meets the volatile Michael Winner. The occasion is his new book, Winner Takes All. And Jackie Dent reports that the magazine Total Film has polled 25 critics to draw up a top ten British films list: Get Carter has come out on top.

Of all the stories in Anne Thompson's collection of movie tidbits, the most interesting is the mini-profile of Collateral screenwriter Stuart Beattie: "Writing from nine to five in the Hollywood home he shares with his wife and two small boys, Beattie is now busily adapting the fantasy bestseller Artemis Fowl for Miramax, Tom Clancy's Without Remorse for Paramount, and the Steve Niles vampire comic 30 Days of Night for Spider-Man director Sam Raimi."

Also in the Observer:

• What's "Wild Bollywood"? Juliette Jowit reports that "India is leading a steadily growing wildlife film industry in developing countries."
• Amelia Gentleman follows up on her recent stories about Georges Lopez, the teacher at the center of "France's most successful documentary," Nicolas Philibert's To Be and To Have. Lopez sued for a share of the profits, claiming the film made use of his intellectual property (his teaching methods), but lost. Now he's explaining himself: He, his pupils and their families feel misled and exploited. Philibert's lawyer counters, "The Mona Lisa did not paint the Mona Lisa."
• Euan Ferguson profiles Sean Connery: "His agent refuses to confirm or deny reports that he is finally retiring: but all other sources indicate he has, to put it in his own vernacular, simply had it up to here with bloody movies."
• Geraldine Bedell meets Eddie Izzard.
• "Tom Stoppard once described [Sheila] Hancock as a 'tired chrysanthemum who could put on a cruel blue look that could freeze a hummingbird to an oven door'. Decode that if you can." Kate Kellaway asks Hancock about her memoirs of her life with her husband, John Thaw.

Posted by dwhudson at October 4, 2004 8:04 AM